You Don't Know Me

The first time he met her was at a mall in Maniska Park. He was standing in line for Taco Bell in the food court when she came up to him. It was random and quite frankly more than a little strange when a girl he’d never met came straight up to him in the middle of a food court. At first he had thought she was going to ask him where something was, like the bathroom for example. But she didn’t.

He vaguely remembers seeing her shortly before their actual meeting. She had been wearing a powder blue dress that seemed to belong in the seventies instead of now. He had thought it strange, but quickly moved on and forgot her.

“You don’t know me,” she had said. That was the first thing she had said to him. “But your hair is red and your glasses are thick and you give off the impression that you don’t care, so here’s my number.”

She didn’t say anything else. Not a single word. She just slipped him her number and walked away.

That was the first time he’d met her.

He didn’t plan on calling her. In fact, he had every intention of throwing away her number and forgetting she ever existed. But there was the question, the mystery, so he ended keeping it.

He called her three months later.

“You don’t know me,” he had said. That was the first thing he had said to her. “But you wear powder blue dresses even though they were never in style and you give your numbers to complete strangers just because you want to.”

“Do you want to meet me somewhere?” She had asked. That was the second thing she ever said to him.

“Yes.”

Her mother named her after a Beatles song because she didn’t think about how melancholy it really was. She had white blond hair and big blue eyes that looked like they were going to pop out any second. She was skinny and she smelt like sunshine and lavender.

Her name was Eleanor.

He didn’t know what to expect from her. When they first started, she’d told him that being with her would be hard. She said that she should never have given him her number because she would end up breaking him into a million little pieces. She said, “Someday I’ll break your heart and you’ll hate me.”

He never told her that he thought he was more likely to break her heart. Sometimes he wishes he had.

When he told that he loved her, she didn’t say it back. She had said, “I’m happy you said it first because I wasn’t going to.” Somehow, he still thought that deep down, she loved him anyways.

Shortly after, the rules started. On Tuesdays, they didn’t love each other. That’s not to say they didn’t like each other, they just didn’t love each other. He never really understood this rule, and even though it existed, he never really followed it. He just learned that he wasn’t supposed to say I love you on Tuesdays.

They moved in together after graduation. But they didn’t move in with each other in the traditional sense. There were two rooms and when it came down to it, they were more like roommates who occasionally kissed and said I love you. Their routine started out regular enough with her making breakfast each morning and him making supper. They both had lunch on their own unless they decided to go out to eat on special occasions, but that rarely happened.

Two months living together when she told him that she needed a day. So that became a thing. Every Monday was her day. From eight until seven, he wasn’t allowed to come home to her. He stayed away and she did whatever it was she did on Mondays from eight until seven. Shortly after that, his day became Thursdays from eight until seven. He never told her what he did on those days, even though he really didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. Sometimes he’d spend the entire day just laying there; sometimes he’d spend the day crying for no real reason other than he just felt like crying sometimes.

One day he came home to find a corner of the living room sectioned off with tape. She said, “When one of us is standing here, we have to act like they aren’t here, okay?” He had agreed, and while it had been hard at first, eventually it just became common happenings in their strange home. At some point, he no longer found it odd that they had a corner of the living room that didn’t exist and that nobody looked at. It wasn’t until his parents came over and asked why she was standing there and said, “Don’t look, she’s not really there,” that he began to question his life. But even with his parents’ looks of confusion, he didn’t stop going to the corner whenever he felt like he needed to be alone.

The first time he realized that she was lying to him was when she said she was going out with a friend. But when he had left to get groceries, he saw her lying on the ground near the slide in Jefferson Park. She was alone, and that was when he realized that she lied to him. The first time he lied to her intentionally was when he told her he had a meeting at work, but really he was going on a walk by the river. It wasn’t necessary that he lie to her, but for some reason, he felt the need to. When he looks back at it sometimes, he wonders when their relationship became one big lie. And then he realizes, they never really did tell the truth.

There were certain words neither of them was allowed to say. She told him one evening that they could no longer say no to each other, so they began to say the opposite of yes. On a sunny day in late September, he told her that they were no longer allowed to say window, so they began to say, the little glass door to the sky. Perhaps their replacement words were longer than the words they lost, but in the end, it was just another thing they did.

“Will you close the little glass door to the sky?”

“The opposite of yes.”

Shortly after they got rid of no and window, they stopped saying cat, leaves, floorboards, sad, frown, television, blanket, and lastly, they couldn’t say love.

“I opposite of hate you,” he’d tell her.

“I know,” she’d say back.

He asked her to marry him once, but she said the opposite of yes, so he never asked again.

On a Monday in December, he came home before seven and she screamed at him for an hour. She walked into the corner that didn’t exist and slept there, so she didn’t exist for a whole night. The next day was Tuesday so she didn’t opposite of hate him. On Wednesday, she acted like it didn’t happen. And on Thursday, she didn’t leave his side. He never came home on a Monday before seven again, mostly because he didn’t want her there on Thursday.

He asked her if she opposite of hated him once, but she didn’t answer, so he never asked again.

When it all began, he thought he’d be the one to break her heart, but in reality, they were breaking each other’s hearts every day.

On a Saturday in July, she told him they needed to talk. He didn’t ask her why because he already knew.

On a Sunday in July, he spent his first Sunday without her.

On a Monday in July, he stayed home even after eight and before seven.

On a Tuesday in July, he still loved her.

On a Wednesday in July, she still hadn’t come back.

On a Thursday in July, he cried because no one was coming home.

On a Friday in July, he called her.

“You don’t know me,” he had said. That was one of the last things he ever said to her. “But you and I were we once.”

“I love you,” she had said. That was one of the last things she ever said to him. “But I don’t think we ever were.”